Living For Memories
by CrazyLittleKookoo
Summary: If you havent read my other story A Haunted Past, go read it before you read this or it wont make sense. Max is getting on with her life, she is getting used to a family, yet why does she feel they are being watched? Is there any danger still? Fax&IggyOC


**A/N PLEASE READ! This is book three of my series, it the long awaited for sequel to A Haunted Past, you need to read that before you even read this otherwise a lot of things wont make sense. I am back, I have been un-active lately on my fanfics but that was because I was doing my revision for my A levels, so enjoy, and FYI I have links on my profile for my character pictures enjoy! XD**

**Living For Memories**

Chapter 1

The sun set was beautiful. The rays flickered over the ocean, making the crashing waves dance like flames. The pink sky that faded out to darker blues with the faintest hint of stars. It was truly something to behold and watch. And yes, there was a reason I was being all poetic. A few moments ago, I had just scattered my sisters ashes into the sea, watching the grey cloud dance and twirl in the wind as it slowly sprinkled down into the pounding waves.

Chase had stood at my side and we had both been silent, remembering Sky and her smile, her laughter, her determination to live free even when we were caged. I had thought she was dead for so many years, yet I had found her, I had been filled with hope and blinding happiness for a short while, taking her out of the labs, out of the machine that had been keeping her alive, had killed her. Yet I knew she was happy, she was alive only through science, her body had ached for death, she had called out to me telepathically, tried to help me, yet as she had always said, there was freedom in death, even for us.

I had been raised as an experiment, originally my creation was a mistake, a failed experiment and free for all types of testing, the division I was born into was known as the Arena, I had lived with Chase and Sky, we had broken out once and lived with Anthony and the other experiments that lived with him in the mountain caves. I had tasted freedom, learnt to fly using my genetically engineered DNA that gave me wings. I had learned to live, so when I had been taken back, I was more rebellious than ever, Sky had come to get me but I thought I had seen her killed, actually she had died but they managed to revive her and keep her barely alive. I was told Chase had died, so I gave up looking for him, I still fought though, I was determined to make life hard for the scientists who tried to play God. Eventually I had been transferred to the School, that was where I met my new family, the Flock, Iggy our blind bomber, the Gasman our resident human gas bomb, Nudge the non stop motor mouth, Angel my own little piece of heaven and Fang, the dark and silent member of my gang that I had grown closer and closer to.

Chase sighed at my back and I turned to look at him and smiled sadly. "I guess that's it."

Chase looked up at me with his navy blue eyes, he smiled back and nodded, pulling me into a hug and squeezing me in his muscular twenty year old frame. I rested my head on his shoulder and squeezed my eyes feeling the emotion choke me a bit. I had already cried for Sky, nights on end of endless sobbing, I wouldn't cry anymore, it had been enough. Chase patted my shoulder and I reached up to rub his short deep brown hair.

"Is it over, for now?" I whispered as the sound of the waves and wind created a barrier for this moment.

I felt Chase tense under me. "It's never over Max, you know that. But it's not going to stop us from living, we're free, we'll continue being free until the day we die, and whilst we're living and being free, we're going to enjoy ourselves bringing down every damn sod who did this to us, all of us. For everything innocent life that has been destroyed because of the experiments."

I smiled feeling the fighting spark in me surface from my sadness, one thing me and Chase were good at and that was being mad and getting revenge. It probably wasn't the most saintly or recreational way to vent my emotions and deal with the cards fate had dealt me, but it was the way how I did things.

"In that case, you can tell your girlfriend first, cause she thinks you're taking her to the Bahamas." I said with a grin as he lightly hit my shoulder.

"That's your fault, you were the one who said I had a surprise for her and somehow without saying what it was, convinced her it was tropical get away. I'm a runaway experiment, I don't have money for a car let alone a vacation."I smirked. "Hey it was pay back for what you did to Fang, I still cant believe you dyed his hair pink."

Chase laughed and stepped up to the cliffs edge, balancing on the very tip of it. "It washed out eventually didn't it."

I smiled myself, remembering Fang's face when Nudge had helped me drag him into a hairdressers to get the colour stripped and his hair back to his normal raven black colouring. It had been an excuse to get him to have his hair cut though. Next on my list of hair cuts we're Iggy, Gazzy and myself.

"Lets go." Chase said tilting off the cliff and snapping his dark brown wings out to catch a air current so he could coast up into the sky and hover waiting for me. I took a light jump and flapped heading straight up with my own wings which were a mixture of light and darks, I nearly barrelled into Chase for fun but pulled back at the last second so that my wing whacked the back of his head. He laughed and pulled my foot, the messing around carried on for a while as we flew down the coast heading for the beach that the Flock was staying at with our friend Cara.

Cara was actually a eighteen year old army girl, she had a footing in high places and from what I could guess she was a military human experiment but she had human rights where we were shoved into cages. She had helped us with the Arena and was offering us a place to stay until we figured out what our next plan was, we were no longer in America, we where in Britain, a place called Wales and the house was really nice, and really big. That was perfect.

On the beach I could see everyone relaxing around a bonfire and barbecue, music was playing and the kids were swimming and using the body boards. Me and Chase both did a running landings, just for fun as I saw him take his third step to steady himself I whacked his back with my wing, making him stumble forward face first into the sand.

Cat who was Chase's girlfriend/partner, glanced up from where she was roasting a sausage in stick in the bonfire. "Get up you wimp, I cant believe you keep getting beat up by your little sister."

I laughed and walked over to the towels set out on the beach, sitting down I kicked off the trainers I was wearing sank my toes into the cold sand. I watched my family and friends interacting, relaxing and feeling more like myself that I had finally let go of the last piece of Sky. Fang padded out of the water, his black hair flicked back of his forehead as he rubbed a towel down his bare chest and face, the trunk he wore hung low and made me grin as Chase eyed him as he walked to me. I turned my attention out to the water, Gazzy and Angel were sat in a small rubber boat, splashing nets into the water, Asidill, Abbey and Sierra who were Cara's friends were drawing in the sand and making sand castles, acting so much younger than their fifteen, seventeen and eighteen years of age. Iggy was bomb diving in the water with Anthony, Cara was cursing at the barbecue as she flipped burgers. To my right Nudge was sat in the days last sun rays trying to tan her already mocha chocolate skin.

I was pulled out of my thoughts as Fang plopped down next to me, leaning over to press a kiss to my cheek. "How are you?" He asked as he rubbed at his wet hair.

I brushed my hands off on my denim shorts and unzipped my blue jacket so that I could rest on it as a cushion under my head, Fang eye the halter top that Karen and Nudge had managed to coerced me into wearing. Just because I had dressed up in high town gear and looked more like a girl than my usual self when I pretended to be a hot for nothing assassin working for the labs, did not mean I wore normal girl clothes willingly. Yet the girls were determined to make me into a girl, rather than letting me just be Maximum Ride.

"I'm good, be fine if Cara cooks the food with out burning anything." I say loudly.

"Hey I'm trying. You cant say nothing either I've heard stories about your cooking." Cara snapped as she forcefully stabbed a burger.

I smirked and laid my head back down as Fang traced his finger over my stomach. To be accurate over the bottom right side of my stomach, where I had somehow been injured a while back, then when the spot had healed it had left a deep dark mark, after a while the mark grew more defined and now it was as clear as day. Through some kind of twist in science, a tattoo had formed, a feather that had frayed and the floating bits were shaped as birds flying away in the distance. I had been given it when I was little by a scientist who was practicing on experiments and marking them, a test had messed up my body chemicals and after running through a fever the tattoo had faded, now it was back and I had to admit it looked pretty cool.

"Do you think if I kissed you now, you're brother would chuck me in the fire?" Fang asked as he waved at Chase who was glaring at him as he sat next to Cat.

"More than likely, we'll just have to wait till he's not around." I laughed as Angel came running onto the sand with a huge crab.

"Look what I found Max!" She put the crab on the floor and it scuttled sideways confused for a few minutes, I moved my feet out of pinching range.

"Wow that's a big crab Angel, why don't you put him back before Cara decides to cook seafood." I ducked as Cara through a bread bun at me. Crab finally figured out what direction the sea was and made a dash for it, it really was big, about the size of a football.

"Shut it Max before I cook you. And that's a spider crab Angel."

I smiled as everyone came out of the water and started drying off. Iggy shook his hair out over Nudge making her squeal as her purple bikini got wet a tiny bit, she had spent the entire afternoon drying off under the sun. Total padded over from the dunes that lined the back of the beach, he shook his fur and sniffed the air keeping his eyes locked on the cooking food.

Asidill curled up with her feet pressed together as she eyed the plates Cara started handing out. "Did you cook the meat until it turned a different colour and was hot all the way through?" she asked sceptically.

Cara made a loud noise with the knives, cups and plates. "Yes, I do learn from my mistakes you know, now shut up and eat it."

Asidill rolled her eyes. "Don't get snappy with me just because you gave everyone in our unit food poisoning right before we had a bust on a warehouse and you had to go in solo."

I blinked then, then smiled. Casual sentences like that were easily thrown around, yet I knew we were far from normal and ordinary. But for us this was nice, it was relaxing, and this was our normal. I nearly felt like a regular teen as I bit into my cheese burger, Fang sat next to me, my family and friends laughing and joking around a fire on the beach. You'd never have guessed only a month a go I had been the most terrifying mutant experiment out there with a list to kill. I stretched out my wings slightly and relaxed. I wonder how long this could last exactly, because life was never this easy for me.

After all, I was Maximum Ride.


End file.
